What Is A Vehicle History Check And Do You Need One?

Buying a brand new car requires a huge investment, and a lot of money. It’s often not an option for a lot of people, so they have to look for a used car for significantly cheaper. This is perfectly understandable and there’s frankly nothing wrong with buying used vehicles.

At least not if you approach it properly.

The thing is a lot of used cars are in much worse shape than you’d think they are in by looking at them, especially if you buy from an independent seller, instead of a car lot. It might be tempting because there’s no commission fee, but you need to know how to approach the situation.

Using A Vehicle History Check

One of the biggest tools available to the used car buyer on today’s market is the vehicle history check. A vehicle history check is quite simple in concept. You take the vehicle identification number, the vehicle’s registration or any other identifying numbers and punch them into a car checker service.

The service may take a bit of time, but they’ll get back to you with a complete and detailed history report on everything that has happened to the car over the span of its lifetime, including repairs and replacements and so forth.

The idea behind this is that everything a car goes through is recorded. When it’s purchased brand new, the owner is recorded, the vehicle is registered to their name, they get insurance and so forth. Any accident the car gets into that would require repairs means either writing it off to the insurance company or bringing it into a garage where they will record the identification numbers themselves.

Anything that hasn’t been repaired in such a manner would, obviously, still be visible on the vehicle in the first place, so wouldn’t need to be written down.

Who Is A Vehicle History Check For?

This information is typically gathered for both insurance and registration purposes, but this doesn’t mean that it can’t be accessed by the public, which is where a vehicle history check comes into play.

You request the information and the service gets you the full history report with everything the car has been through outlined on it. This lets you easily judge the condition the car is in even if it’s not particularly visible. The idea is to lay everything out in front of people so they can make fair and easy decisions when it comes to purchasing a used vehicle.

When you visit a car lot or if you’re buying a car from somebody then you should be able to ask them to show you the history report on the vehicle. It might not be readily available, but the people have the same means you do to look these things up and print them off.

If they don’t do this, or don’t allow you to do this, chances are the vehicle itself is not something you should be interested in and you can safely take your business elsewhere. If they refuse to show you a vehicle history check then chances are there is something wrong.

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Darren has had a passion for cars since he was a kid and when he is not working on and fixing them, he likes to read and also blog about them.